Cher Resurrected, Again, by a Hit; The Long, Hard but Serendipitous Road to 'Believe'

There's a saying among those who work around Cher. If there's a nuclear war, only two species will survive: the cockroaches and Cher.

She may be the only singer who had No. 1 hits in the 1960's and 70's to return this decade with a new No. 1 single. This week, her song ''Believe'' went to the top of the pop charts, resurrecting a mutating career that refuses to be buried. The song has been No. 1 in 22 countries so far, and with a Spanish version on the way this may be only the beginning.

To a listener, ''Believe'' may sound like a sure hit regardless of the performer's history. The verses are rich and bittersweet, with the added gimmick of breaking up Cher's voice through an effect that makes her sound robotic. And the choruses are catchy and uplifting, with Cher wailing, ''Do you believe in life after love?'' All of it bounces over a bed of 80's-style electronic dance pop. It is a song with a universal theme -- a woman trying to convince herself that she can survive a breakup -- that has crossed pop borders to appeal to old and young, mainstream and alternative music fans, and even those who have little affinity for contemporary pop.

So where does a hit like ''Believe'' come from? There are six songwriters credited with writing the single. Of those, Cher knows only one. Digging deeper, at least four others, including Cher, contributed to the music and lyrics of ''Believe'' but are not credited on the record because there were already too many people listed. How much work, how many people and how much luck does it take to make a four-minute pop song?

''Believe'' began nine years ago in a small flat in Sussex, England. Brian Higgins had returned home from his job selling advertising space for Reed, a paper company. He was 23, and trying to teach himself how to write songs. He sat at one of the keyboards in the far end of his bedroom, lifted his fingers to play a few chords and it happened. ''The lyrics and the melody just flowed out at the same time,'' he said. ''Normally you play a few chords, establish a melody and then start to apply a few lyrics. But this time, I promise you, the whole thing came out at once, which is really weird.''

Five years later Mr. Higgins's career began to blossom, and he started getting odd jobs with such pop stars as Diana Ross, Dannii Minogue and Pulp. Practically every time Mr. Higgins met with an artist, manager or record executive he played them his unborn dance song, ''Believe.'' But no one showed the slightest interest. Mr. Higgins knew the song wasn't perfect; the choruses were great but the verses were only skeletal. As he began gathering his own team of songwriters, he had them tinker with the verses every so often. But no matter what they did there were no takers.

In the meantime, Rob Dickins, president of London-based Warner Music U.K., had decided that the only thing Cher could do to make up for her last album, ''It's a Man's World,'' a set of rock ballads that sold disappointingly, was to focus on her gay audience with a high-energy dance record. Mr. Dickins, who would oversee the album, was in his 27th year with the company, and this would be his last project with Warner Brothers. He did not know it at the time, but he was on the verge of being dismissed.

''He said, 'I want you to make a dance album,' '' Cher said the other day in a telephone interview from Paris. ''I said I didn't want to. But I have that problem: If someone says I want you to do something and I'm not sure, I usually just say I don't want to do it.''

Cher said she was not interested in dance music anymore because it was not a genre with real songs. Mr. Dickins walked away, intent on finding real songs to disprove her argument. That was when luck intervened, and a chance encounter set the wheels in motion that would make Cher a pop star again. Mr. Higgins was visiting Warner Brothers to talk about the Minogue album he had worked on. As he waited outside the office of an executive who was on the phone, Mr. Dickins happened to walk downstairs and down the corridor, where he met Mr. Higgins.

Mr. Dickins asked the songwriter if he would be interested in submitting a song or two for consideration for the Cher album. Three days later, a tape with 16 of Mr. Higgins's songs arrived. ''I lay on my bed and put the tape on and listened to every song,'' Mr. Dickins said. ''The ninth song was 'Believe.' I thought: 'Cher could do this chorus, especially the lyrics, with her private life the way it is. She's gone through all these things.' ''

Mr. Dickins called the songwriter the next day and asked him to complete ''Believe.'' ''About a week later he comes in with the finished song and it's terrible,'' Mr. Dickins said. ''I've got this great chorus and this terrible song. So I told him, 'We're taking it away from you.' He says, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'You've done no justice to your own song.' ''

A 'Dungeon'

Of a Studio

Mr. Higgins handed over the song, admitting that he was probably too close to it. Meanwhile Mr. Dickins had found a song for the album called ''Dove l'Amore,'' which was written by Paul Barry and Mark Taylor, an English songwriting team. Cher visited their studio in a suburb west of London with the intention of recording only that song. She said she remembered the studio, called Metro, as ''this little dungeon of a place, the smallest studio I've ever been in in my life.'' Even Mr. Dickins had second thoughts about the place: ''I went down and saw Cher sitting in this horrible room on this horrible sofa and thought, 'What have I done to her?' '' But the chemistry was good.

When Mr. Dickins sent ''Believe'' to Metro studios a staff songwriter, Steve Torch, took a crack at the verses. Mr. Dickins was not happy with the result. ''I said, 'What is wrong with all you people? I've got a hit chorus and none of you can write a song,' '' he said.

Brian Rawling, the producer who runs Metro, begged for another chance and got it, handing the song to Mr. Barry, who kept hitting brick walls. ''I remember one version in particular that Cher didn't like,'' Mr. Barry said. ''My son had just been born and I was ecstatic. One lyric Cher said was total garbage. She said, 'You're too happy.' ''

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It was during this time that Mr. Dickins was asked to leave his job at Warner Brothers as a result of a personality clash with Bob Daly, a chairman of Warner Brothers and Warner Music. That this album would be his last word at Warner Brothers was ''probably why I was so relentless with the song,'' Mr Dickins said.

Finally Mr. Barry's partner, Mr. Taylor, turned in a version good enough to begin working on. The lyrics began to match the strength of the chorus. The first verse now ended: ''It's so sad that you're leaving/It takes time to believe it/But after all is said and done/You're going to be the lonely one.''

Mr. Barry began putting together the music, starting with a rough drum track he made on a computer program called Cubase, a crude keyboard melody and a bass line. He and Mr. Taylor remember trying to make a dance song that was a little different, with subtle melodies and quiet backing vocals tucked away; verses in the style of Lamont Dozier and soulful 80's funk touches influenced by Stevie Wonder and Prince.

But Mr. Dickins was still dissatisfied. He thought the eight-bar section of the song, known as the middle eight, before the final chorus which simply repeated the lyric ''I don't need you anymore,'' was too repetitive and didn't take the song anywhere. This time he was ignored. But Cher had a more pressing problem. She said the second verse was simply a repetition of the ''so sad that you're leaving'' sentiment expressed in the first one. ''I thought, 'You can be sad for one verse, but you can't be sad for two,' '' Cher said. ''That night I was lying there in my bathtub with my toe in that little faucet, playing around with the words, and it came out in one line. I thought, 'I've had time to see it through/Maybe I'm too good for you.' ''

But when the song was finished the verses still seemed lifeless, no matter how many different ways Cher sang them. And that was when luck smiled on ''Believe'' again.

One morning Cher turned on her television set and saw a program featuring a singer named Andrew Roachford, whose CD she instantly bought.

''We were tackling 'Believe' for the gazillionth time,'' she said. ''And I said: 'I'm so tired of doing this. Let's just put on this CD and listen to music and get away from this.' '' On one song the vocals were processed through a vocoder to sound mechanical. Cher remembers suggesting that they add something like that to ''Believe.''

In the interim a new voice-tuning program for Cubase had arrived in the studio, and Mr. Taylor decided to teach himself how to use it. He randomly chose two bars of ''Believe'' and looped it on the computer. In his tinkering, he came across the wavering, soulful, robotic vocal sound that is now the song's most loved and recognizable element. But he was afraid that if Cher heard it, she would object to his experimenting with her vocals. ''But something just snapped, and a couple of beers later we decided to play it for her, and she just freaked out,'' he said.

Victory

And a High-Five

That is, freaked out in a good way. ''We high-fived,'' Cher said. ''It was like some stupid 'Rocky' film.'' When Cher left the studio to begin filming ''Tea With Mussolini'' Mr. Taylor put together a quick mix of ''Believe'' and sent it to Cher and Mr. Dickins, who thought they had gotten carried away with the robotic sound.

''He said, 'Everyone loves that song but wants to change that part of it,' '' Cher said. ''I said, 'You can change that part of it, over my dead body!' And that was the end of the discussion. I said to Mark before I left, 'Don't let anyone touch this track, or I'm going to rip your throat out.' ''

And no one changed the track. That rough mix became the final version of the song. And when the song leapt to No. 1 on the British pop charts and stayed there for seven weeks, resulting in champagne toasts every Monday at the Metro studio, was everyone finally happy? Well, sort of. When Mr. Dickins called Mr. Rawling to tell him the song was No. 1, the news wasn't all good. ''I told him: 'We're No. 1, fantastic position. But the middle eight still doesn't cut it!' ''

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A version of this article appears in print on March 11, 1999, on Page E00001 of the National edition with the headline: Cher Resurrected, Again, by a Hit; The Long, Hard but Serendipitous Road to 'Believe'. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe